brainstorms

Monday June 20, 2005

notes on a strange encounter...

my recent blognote on groklaw FUD piece on sun produced some curious responses both here and in groklaw threads; here are some quick notes and observations:

i made a mistake. sometimes, looking at a baloon animal, pointing out a few anatomic problems and suggesting that it is much less real than it looks is not enough.

when i read groklaw editorials, i do not know nor think about the people behind them, their reputation, their personal details, whether they are nice or not. i only look at the content. i am not a part of that community; i visit it once in a while to read peter's book in progress. i glance at headlines to see if there is anything of interest, eg. another "IANAL" bashing of Sun or its licenses.

i have again revisited previous groglaw main articles around CDDL [eg. here, here, here and here] and i find them more troubling than before [and i am filtering all the journalistic tongue-clicking and name calling] the problem is not that groklaw does not have some interesting questions; the problem is that it speculates about the answers, and builds further arguments as if the earlier speculations have been resolved in its favor. this is not done in polite company.

i am pleased to note that in some articles, authors admit to wearing GPL-colored glasses for their view of the world. at least there is no pretention of impartiality in their work.

someone at groklaw called me mean and silly. i guess i am mean to bad arguments no matter who generates them. after revisiting earlier groklaw pieces, i realize that my note was not as mean as it may have been. i try not to be silly, but sometimes subject matter deserves nothing better.

as someone suggested, i do love my workplace and employer. i do not put my critical faculties on ice as a result; quite the contrary, i exercise them regularly and with good effect.

i am just an engineer blogging. i do not speak for sun. i do speak my mind.

sapere aude.

[tbd: balloon animal image]

CPB is hurt...

at least in one particular part of the world, anything associated with the word public appears to be in serious danger. latest casualty: corporation for the public broadcasting. it will have to serve public with $100 million [a quarter of its budget] fewer dollars. the reason: supposed liberal bias of PBS news programming. that roughly translates to not as fair and balanced as, say CNN or FOX is. mind boggling, is it not? i shall double my donations to the nearest PBS station. [in my case WNED TV Public Television (PBS) in Buffalo, New York] i hope other canadians will do the same.

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. -- Dan Quayle

someone comes to town, someone leaves town...

cory doctorow's latest novel, someone comes to town, someone leaves town is now available online under a creative commons license (of course). this time, he is using a creative commons developing nations license. from his announcement:

This book is the first novel to employ the new Creative Commons Developing Nations License. That's a license that lets anyone living in a country that's not on the World Bank's list of high-income countries treat the book as if it were in the public domain. If you live in a developing nation, you can print your own editions of this book and sell them, you can make your own movies, radio plays, translations and whatever else you can think of, charge whatever the traffic will bear for them, and never give me a penny or ask my permission (though I hope you'll drop me a line and let me know what you're up to so I can keep up on the book's spread!). The only limitation on this right is that you may only export your works to other developing nations: the rich nations where my paying customers live are strictly off-limits.

nicely done. congratulations cory.

music: tbd.